


Chasing Boys 1

by sophinisba



Series: Chasing Boys [1]
Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Childhood, F/M, Flashback, Pre-Canon, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-17
Updated: 2007-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in second grade, Delilah led a pack of girls who would chase their favorite boys around the playground.  (Warning for seven-year-olds kissing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Boys 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for and betaed by absolutefiction, who requested Casey/Delilah in the first kiss meme.

Back in second grade, Delilah led a pack of girls who would chase their favorite boys around the playground at recess. Most of the boys would run as fast as they could, not realizing that Delilah, already at age seven, was the kind of girl who took pleasure in the chase. She never had great sprinting speed, but she had strong legs and strong lungs to keep her going through a full thirty minutes of charging in wide loops and twists across the blacktop, and she never tripped.

If asked, the girls would say that they did it out of _love_.

Most boys would eventually tire and be caught, maybe after days or weeks of running. Once a boy was tackled and brought down, most of the girls would amble away, laughing in triumph, leaving him squirming on the ground as Delilah and a few other bold ones tickled and tormented him. A few times, with a few very special victims that she loved more than the others, she held the boy's head still with both hands and planted her pursed, dry lips against his cheek or his forehead or the side of his mouth.

Some of the boys would complain about girl germs and one of them once cried, but no one ever told the teachers. A few of them actually seemed to like it, but if they stayed still and let it happen (as Zeke did) Delilah would soon lose interest and call them "boring", and the next day she'd announce the new object of her affection, start a new pursuit.

Casey Connor was the only boy she went after and never caught in those days. He was fast, but more importantly he understood her methods. He didn't use up all his energy in the first five minutes. He got that the game was about endurance.

He also had a strategy that the other boys didn't think of: he'd leave the blacktop for that big structure made of safety-tested logs and tires and metal slides and cylinders. Casey could swing across the monkey bars like nobody's business, and he knew Delilah was reluctant to climb up after him because she didn't want anybody looking up her skirt. He'd slide down a pole or jump out of some tube and then dash out and keep running, and years later Delilah would wonder if he enjoyed being chased as much as she enjoyed chasing. Maybe he wouldn't have had such a hard time in P.E. if she'd kept him in practice.

Casey was good when he was paying attention, but when he got distracted he could be a real klutz.

_What an idiot!_ was Delilah's first thought when he tripped and fell off the wooden platform of the jungle gym, six feet down to the hard packed sand below. Everyone knew you were supposed to slide down the fireman's pole to land square on your feet, and Casey had done that plenty of times before. But he wasn't expecting her to show up next to him on that platform, and he fell backwards.

Delilah's second thought was a panicked _I killed him!_, because instead of getting up or even yelling at her he was just lying there on his back, with one arm twisted under him in a way that just looked wrong. Was he even breathing?

People started running – purposeful running to crowd around him, with a few kids running back to the building entrance to tell the teachers. Delilah backed away from the edge and slowly climbed down, imagining that the police would come next, and they'd have to take her off to jail for killing Casey. Then he started making a noise – not angry, like she would've expected, but a high, needy sound, sort of like her dog Jesse made when he was sick. Delilah walked away from the playground and no one followed her. She walked all the way to her house, where her dad was home (he was already sick back then and had stopped going to work) and he called the school to tell them she was okay. They stayed home and played with Jesse for the whole afternoon, and her dad didn't make her say why she was crying.

Delilah didn't want to go to school the next day but her dad convinced her it would be all right. He drove her there and even walked with her to her classroom, holding her hand.

"There you are, Delilah," said Miss King. "Are you feeling better today?"

Delilah didn't know what to say.

"You must have been worried about Casey," the teacher said, and Delilah nodded. "And we all were, but he's going to be just fine."

Casey had a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder. Miss King said that meant out of place, and Delilah thought that sounded right, from what she'd seen, but she didn't say anything at first, waiting to see how everyone treated her. But they weren't angry! It wasn't just that they didn't say out loud that it was her fault – nobody even looked at her funny! In the afternoon they made a giant get well card and Delilah said she would take it to his house because she and Casey were friends. She had her dad drive her there.

Casey's dad held up the poster for him to look at from his bed, and then he set it down by the wall. They couldn't hand it to him because his arm was in a cast and a sling.

"Does it hurt?" Delilah asked.

"Yes," said Casey.

"Can I touch it?"

Casey scrunched up his face. "It hurts when you touch it."

"Okay."

Casey's dad asked if she would like anything to eat or drink and she said yes, please, she would like some juice.

"And ice cream," said Casey.

"Juice and ice cream don't go together," said Delilah, but his dad went to get juice for her and ice cream for him.

"They bring me whatever I want now!" Casey said when they were alone.

"You didn't tell anybody, did you?" said Delilah.

"No. I said I was just playing and I fell."

"Are you _going_ to tell anybody?"

"No."

"That's good." It didn't occur to her at the time to say thank you or sorry (and wouldn't occur to her for a long time afterward either), but she did the nicest thing she could think of, which was to lean over him in his bed, very careful not to disturb his arm, and kiss him on the lips. She'd never done that with any of the other boys and she didn't get it quite right – their noses smushed together – but she didn't try it again.

Casey stared at her the way he did on the playground sometimes, whether it was Delilah chasing him to try to kiss him or the boys chasing him to try to more painful things. Delilah didn't understand what he was so scared of now, since she hadn't touched his arm or tried to tickle him. But he just kept staring at her and didn't say anything to explain what was wrong.

His dad came back and she drank her juice and thanked him. She politely told Casey that she'd see him at school and then left.

*

He came back to school two days later. Everyone wanted to sign their names or color on his cast, and once he realized how much fun it was to be popular he stopped telling them that it hurt. Delilah was the only one in their class who never signed it. She also stopped chasing boys around the playground.

Casey told the story of how he fell backwards off the jungle gym a hundred times and as far as Delilah knows he never told anyone that she'd chased him off. That was a real friend. And for all the times she laughed at him in public in the ten years between the first time they kissed and the second, she always knew she could trust him. Casey was the kind of kid you could count on.

"I'm sorry," she would tell him when the FBI finally let them go that Saturday. "Thank you."


End file.
